Stories Before Sept 2016

Gloria Campos, one of Dallas-Fort Worth’s best known news anchors, announced on Twitter on Wednesday that she’s retiring after 30 years with WFAA.

“I signed my last contract specifically to end this way,” Campos, 59, said in a phone interview. “They knew I wanted to retire, and I’ve been planning this for probably five years. It finally came to the point where I don’t need to do this. They’ve been very accommodating, and I get to go out on top, on my own terms.”

Campos has been with WFAA since September 1984, when she started as an anchor -- the first featured Hispanic anchor in the DFW market. Before that, she spent nine years at KGBT-TV in Harlingen, her hometown, which was her only other broadcasting job. She started there a week after graduated from Southwest Texas State University in 1976.

“I’ve been working since I was like 15 years old,” said Campos. “In probably one of the most stressful jobs you can have, working in the news business. I’m ready to take it easy for a while.”

“I won’t miss the bad news,” Campos said. “I always thought that I would get jaded or callous, and that would tell me, when I stopped being touched or moved by the news, that it was time to go. But it’s been the exact opposite. It’s taken its toll, all the bad news that I’ve had to share with people. So I’ve tried really hard to deliver the bad news in a compassionate way.”